Pho

Vietnam is home to some of the world’s best street food, and its French colonial past gives its cuisine an intriguing Gallic twist on the typical Southeast Asian fare of rice, noodles and stir fries.

There are surely few sights more comforting than a bowl of pho, the thin slices of rosy beef cooking slowly in the steaming broth, and Pho serves up a good version of the Vietnamese classic, which is fortunate given the name and all.

If you’re a stranger to the pho, it’s simple: Choose your variation of meat and noodle from the five or six on offer. Throw in a handful or two from the plate of pungent herbs, sprouts and leaves – careful with the chopped chillies (accidentally making your soup too toxic to eat is an embarrassing rookie error.) Then use the supplied condiments to pimp your pho: hoisin to sweeten the soup, nam pla to deepen its umami funk, beef paste to meatify things, soya for a jolt of salt. Then slurp and enjoy. Extra points for polishing off one of Pho’s enormous bowls, noodles and all: you may not need to eat for the rest of the week.